


Peccadillo

by Drac



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Eventual Lydia/Everyone, F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drac/pseuds/Drac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for kmeme prompt 'Lydia/Loyalists' - Lydia knows that she's a pawn in Farley's game, but scary things happen when pawns reach the end of the board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She's slept with Farley hundreds of times before, of course she has; he's her boss. There is a silent agreement there for the woman approaching middle age without a husband, and the man just past it without a wife. Some times, when he comes back to Dunwall on leave, they'll spend whole weeks passing only between serving at the bar and fucking in upstairs rooms. He says she'd make a fortune as a whore and, oh, she knows that.

Lydia knows that Farley isn't with the Navy any more, though he still insists she call him 'Admiral' - he turns up at the pub all too often, even with the district mostly closed down with the plague. Tonight, she knows he has an ulterior motive from the moment he steps through the door, and now his thick arm is pressing on her body just too heavily, and she says 'What are you here for?'

Farley exhales through his mouth. 'I'm committing treason.'

'What?'

'I - I think I've started a conspiracy. We're going to hide here, at the pub.'

'Oh... fuuuuuuck,' she groans, wriggling out of his grasp, out of the thin sheets that cling to her, towards her clothes. She can feel his eyes on her naked breasts, and she turns around to climb into her trousers. When she faces him again, he has his pistol trained at her heart.

'Don't shoot me, Farley.'

'So long as you don't make me.'

'Deal,' she says, and she listens to him weave his story, tell her about the information he has, and the allies he's made: an Overseer from Morley, a nobleman, Pendleton - 'Not one of those ghastly twins?' 'No, their younger brother' - an old man with a boat, who knows the river like the lips of a lover, a young governess, just out of training, with all the skills needed to raise an Empress.

'You'd keep the Empress here?' she asks, 'in the pub?'

'When we rescue her, when we still have to hide her, yes.'

Lydia has found her way back into his arms, reclined on the narrow bed. She nudges her head back into the coarse grey hair on his chest. The pistol is on the bedside table.

'What about Cecelia and me, then? Are you going to shoot us anyway?'

'No! We'd - hang on, Cecelia?'

'Cecelia. The red-headed girl. She works here.' she twists her head to look at his expression of dumb confusion. 'she let you in this evening. She opened the fucking door!'

'Yes, Cecelia, yes. Do - do I pay her? I don't remember if I -'

'You pay her, Farley. Now answer me - what happens to us? Are you sacrificing little pawns here, you and this rich fop and this Overseer, or are you gonna let us in on it?'

Farley puts his chin on the top of her head. He smells foul. 'That's simple - are you going to rat us out?'

'Never.'

'Then, my pawn has reached the end of the board. Queen me.'

'That doesn't make any sense,' she says, but still gives him a coy smile and slips beneath the sheets again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Augh unlike the one posted to the kmeme I actually have an idea of where this is going so hopefully I should have a couple more chapters up soonish. Hopefully. Who knows (I kinda know). I love Lydia lots lots lots


	2. Chapter 2

People start turning up at the pub again. Granted, they're all Farley's motley band of conspirators, but Lydia has barely met new people besides terrifying weepers for months. One morning, she sees him lugging huge pieces of corrugated steel up the stairs while she fixes breakfast in the pub, and later that afternoon she watches him, stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat and far too handsome for an old man, lay them from the attic window, across the workshop that she's never had the key for, towards the ruined apartment block on the riverfront. It looks dangerous. She tries not to worry.

She meets Samuel that afternoon. He's charming, and gives her a ride on the Amaranth. The river wind is salty and rank and when she absent-mindedly trails her hand in the water she nearly loses a finger to a hagfish but she doesn't mind too much. She wonders if all of these Loyalists are souls like Samuel.

They're not. The second person she meets is Piero Joplin - although it takes nearly an hour of stilted conversation for him to actually introduce himself - Farley is out and she receives him in the middle of the night. 

He demands to see the workshop and when she says she hasn't got a key he procures one and for a second she seethes because she's worked at this pub for longer than Farley's owned it, and how is it that she's never seen the workshop but this stranger gets the key? Piero murmurs to himself as he tours the workshop and she trails behind him because, fuck, she hasn't seen it. When she invites Piero into the bar for a cup of tea he declines, and starts setting up shop, muttering to himself.

Cecelia is still awake and fully dressed when she creeps into the servant's quarters, and it scares the shit out of her.

'The Admiral is still out,' Cecelia says quietly as Lydia shucks her blouse and climbs into her rickety bed. She wonders sometimes why she doesn't sleep in the spare rooms from when this pub had patrons - the beds aren't great but they've got mattresses and warm sheets, scratchy blankets with ribbon trims to keep the heat in - Farley has taken one but there's still another, and the attic room they used to fuck in, but Lydia couldn't sleep there if she tried.

Cecelia slips into the bunk next to her. They're so close they're almost touching, and some mornings when she wakes up they are, legs entwined, arms crossing each other, holding hands. It's familial, sisterly really. Lydia's slept with hundreds of men and women but she wouldn't sleep with Cecelia. She wouldn't hurt her like that.

The next morning another conspirator arrives with Farley in Samuel's boat, a slim-faced woman in brown, carrying a heavy carpet bag. Farley leads her across the dangerous metal platforms to that ruined flat and leaves her there - later that afternoon Lydia hears the poor girl taking terrified, tentative steps back into the pub. Lydia fixes tea.

'So you're our governess, yes?'

'... I'm sorry?'

She freezes and looks at Lydia with suspicious eyes, a weary glance to the pot of tea and the chipped mugs set out on the bar.

'Lydia Brooklaine,' she says, and tries an ironic curtsey, 'I'm – I was – the hostess here.'

'Oh,' says the girl, rubbing at her tiny eyes, 'I'm Callista Curnow. I – sorry, the Admiral made out like I'd be the only woman here.' Lydia tries hard not to think about Farley aiming his pistol between her nipples. She pours a cup of tea.

'Oh no, there's me, and Cecelia too. We haven't got milk, but there's sugar,' she pushes the sticky tin over, watches as Callista shakes barely a teaspoon of it into her cup. 'So, what brings you to our little conspiracy? The Admiral said there was going to be a governess.'

'I was a nanny, mostly. I -'

'No, he said governess. He said you have training.'

'- well, yes, but, I only had one job as a governess. The Admiral, he – he saved me from a lot of trouble, okay.'

Lydia's sure that if she was anyone else she would have left it there, but she's been working behind a bar since she was barely a woman, and she's wheedled a thousand stories out of a thousand boozy men with tear-streaks on their faces. She hunches across the bar, smiling. 

Callista doesn't smile back.

'So you were fired, then.' It's not a question, but Lydia's impressed by Callista's unyielding stony expression, 'what did you do? Teach the children swears?'

'I am a fine governess!' Callista snaps, blood rising in her face.

'Okay, not your teaching then. You were caught in bed with the gentleman of the house?' Callista's glare is like ice, '... the lady of the house?'

Callista puts down her cup very, very gently, 'so, he told you? He promised me – he promised! I'm being made a scapegoat again, he promised I could get another job -'

'Told me what?'

'- but through you it'll reach the ears of anyone who wants to hear it -'

'Slow down, the Admiral -'

'- You mustn't hire her, she's a wicked... a foul... Callista Curnow is an _invert_!'

The word hangs in the air like so much smog – Callista isn't upset, she's angry, or disappointed, or maybe those two things are how she expresses being upset. Lydia doesn't know her. She says:

'Good.'

and revels in the confused pause, the hissing intake of breath. 'It's not -'

'You know, where I come from, they called us _adventurers_. Maybe that's old fashioned now.'

Lydia's had variations on this conversation so many times, with girls who've been told kissing other girls is sinful, girls whose fathers recite the strictures day-long, girls whose mothers tell them it's in their humours, but it will pass. That's still her favourite line, the clever one to whip out when they're alarmed and a bit embarrassed at spilling their darkest secret to the bar-wench. When she was younger, Callista's age, working at another pub, The Whaler's Catch or The Blue Emperor or The Protector's Arms, she'd say that 'adventurer' was the popular slang, but she can't really play at that game any more.

'You!?' Callista says, and for a moment she seems lost for words, 'but you're so -'

The word she is going to say is 'old', but its absence leaves a vacuum that sucks in a thousand worse ones from the depths of Lydia's imagination – ugly, menopausal, worthless and lonely and sad. 

There is no connection between them that afternoon, and Lydia goes to bed before it's even dark, staring at the bunk above her, feeling like a hopeless little girl again. When Cecelia comes into the servant's quarters, bringing the river-stink with her, Lydia doesn't even bother to turn her head.

'Callista told me to say she's sorry, Lydia. She said she was surprised? I don't really understand,' Cecelia has the good grace to strip before she gets into bed tonight, leaving her damp, smelly clothes on the floor. Her skin is cold and wet. Lydia doesn't answer, so Cecelia continues,

'You didn't argue. She seems a bit uppity to me, but maybe that's just what people who went to school are like. Posh.'

'She's not posh.'

'Huh. I thought maybe she'd... you know how posh people are, when they see everything you have and they call it 'paltry', but they don't mean to be rude, that's just a posh word for less than they have.'

There is the dry _shfff_ of sheets, and then Cecelia's bony naked back against her side.

'Goodnight, Lydia.'

Lydia thinks for a long time about climbing out of bed and up the stairs and demanding entry to Callista's little riverside room, but in the end she doesn't.

She feels better in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so I have always headcanoned that Callista's a lesbian. fight me idc. there's basically nothing in this chapter ahahahaa i feel like everything's off I'm so sorry.


End file.
